Researchers have discovered a way to erase specific fears from our brains employing a technique that consists of artificial intelligence and brain scanning technology. The research, conducted at the University of Cambridge, was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, and it could help treat patients suffering from different trauma-based conditions.
The research could open a way to treatments to a large spectrum of psychological affections, from post-traumatic stress disorder to different phobias.
New Fear Treatment
According to the official university statement, one in every 14 people is affected by the spectrum of disorders that this technique could address. The situation is increasingly complicated to deal with from a health management point of view, as the current approach involves aversion therapy. This treatment involves the patients confronting their fears by exposure to it.
The cognitive mechanism behind this type of treatment is that the patient, once confronted with the fear, will realize that rationally speaking there is nothing to worry about, thus being able to overcome said fear. However, the team of scientists who took part in this study, from the University of Cambridge as well as from the United States and Japan, have managed to give the world another solution which could prove to be less psychologically painful.
Overwriting Fear
The technique employed by the researchers in their attempt to treat different fears is named "decoded neurofeedback," and it consists of monitoring the brain activity of the patients in order to understand the cognitive patterns that represent the fearful behavior and its specific stimuli.
As part of the research, the scientists created fearful memories in 17 subjects by the means of electric shocks when the subjects were shown a specific computer image. An artificial intelligence algorithm helped the researchers decode and read the brain activity.
After this, the subjects were given positive reinforcement consisting of a small amount of money whenever the team picked up features of the mild fear memory implanted in the brain. As a result, the same characteristics of the memory that were signs of a painful shock at the beginning of the study began to predict a positive reaction to the stimulus.
Giving a reward as a method to recondition the brain and reduce the fear memory worked. The researchers were able to induce a positive reaction to the same stimulus that used to cause a fearful response without making the patients feel confronted in any way.
This technique is by far one of the least intrusive possible, as the fear memory is not overwritten all at once, but in a series of steps in order for the cognitive activity of the patients to not be too affected by this method.
